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Come on You Reds: The Story of Toronto FC
280Overview
From Toronto FC’s inception, the club and their fans did things their own way. When Danny Dichio scored the first goal in franchise history, fans at BMO Field threw their seat cushions onto the field in ecstasy. It looked as though TFC had a bright future ahead of it, but what followed instead was eight seasons of poor results, mismanagement, and misery.
Still, TFC fans never wavered, building the most unique atmosphere in Toronto sports. When it seemed TFC was destined to become an afterthought in a city crowded with teams, the club carved out a niche by creating a winning culture unlike anything Toronto had ever seen, bringing a championship to the city in 2017.
Come on You Reds takes fans behind the scenes, from the inception of TFC, through the team’s lowest years, and finally, to the story of how management arguably built the best team in Major League Soccer history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459742376 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dundurn Press |
| Publication date: | 10/30/2018 |
| Pages: | 280 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Message Boards, Manna Dropping from Heaven, and an Armani Suit
A CLAIM COULD BE MADE that Toronto FC's birthplace was either in the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment offices of 50 Bay Street in downtown Toronto or in the Major League Soccer offices across the border in New York City.
But, as it turns out, TFC as a club was first dreamt up in a space much more difficult to pin down and then eventually conceived in a setting where so many fans still watch games to this day.
Midway through the first decade of the 2000s, soccer had not yet broken into the mainstream consciousness of Canadians. Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the two iconic global brands who would usher the sport into the homes of Canadians via a generation of young, impressionable teenagers clamouring for the next star, were just beginning their careers at Barcelona and Manchester United, respectively. David Beckham was himself a star recognized around the world after incredibly impressive spells at Manchester United and Real Madrid, but in North America he could have just as easily been identified as the husband of Spice Girl Victoria Beckham or the player Keira Knightley wanted to imitate in 2002's Bend It Like Beckham. Before Beckham's historic move to the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007, soccer magazines from England could usually be found only at the back of the magazine rack, past the hockey, basketball and, well, motocross glossies.
Soccer, for better or worse, was still a fringe sport in North America's biggest cities, such as Toronto. Many in that city could only look with confused curiosity at the thousands of people who congregated along two of the larger streets, Danforth Avenue and Dundas Street, to watch two unlikely teams, Greece and Portugal, face off in the final of Euro 2004. That a Greece team without a single superstar defeated a heavily favoured Portuguese side was one thing. But how could this dull 1–0 win, on the other side of the world, motivate jubilant supporters of Greece to close down 10 blocks of the major thoroughfare in Toronto? It only confirmed what many unfamiliar with the sport suspected: Soccer is strange.
But beyond the ouzo-soaked fans on Danforth revelling in patriotic fervour were many other people who also revelled in that strangeness. And there was a degree of patriotism involved there, as well; albeit without much return up to that point.
And without a street to call their own, they congregated where so many fanatics met and congregated in that decade: on message boards on the internet.
For all the future influence that the club could have on the growth of the game on Canadian soccer pitches across the country, Toronto FC would not exist without internet message boards.
Every day early in the 2000s, hundreds of fans would log in to a message board called Big Soccer to discuss their obsession: not a giant club on the other side of the planet, like Arsenal or Liverpool (though many of these fans had their allegiances), but instead, the players that represented them in red Canadian jerseys.
The Voyageurs were a country-wide group of Canadian soccer supporters that was founded in 1996 and, spread out across a large country, enabled like-minded people online to discuss Canadian soccer. It's worth noting that the national men's side, after achieving their best-ever FIFA ranking at 40th in 1996, would plummet to being ranked 101st in the world two years later.
But as the century turned, interest on these message boards did not dissipate. Fans still gathered and critically examined the state of the local game. And, given that local soccer still garnered very few, if any, headlines in national newspapers and both local and national men's teams games weren't always featured prominently on national television broadcasts, internet message boards were the place where those who didn't feel their needs were being met by mainstream media would meet.
Sean Keay was a member of those early message boards. He remembers them as a forum for people to gather, share thoughts on Canada's teams, and perhaps even bridge that divide between online and "real life" friendships.
"Even though it was a much different time and they were just these simple message boards, I wouldn't be in the situation I'm in now without that community," said Keay, who is now a Manager of Digital Strategy at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE). "The first time I met the Voyageurs, I was 16 and my brother said 'I met these people on the internet and we're going to go watch Canada play in World Cup qualifying.' And I was like, 'No, that's the thing your parents tell you not to do.' But that's exactly where the community came from and grew from."
It was a community that Paul Beirne had to listen to.
Beirne is, in many ways, the founding father of Toronto FC. He had been overseeing ticket sales and service for the Leafs and Raptors with MLSE. With Richard Peddie at the pinnacle of power at president and CEO of MLSE, the owners of the company, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, had given Peddie and MLSE a mandate for enterprise value growth.
"It was an era when you saw MLSE trying new things," said Beirne. It was during this time that MLSE launched Leafs TV; welcomed the Leafs farm club, the Marlboros, back from St. John's to Toronto; and continued commercial development outside of Maple Leaf Square.
Beirne had begun to feel bored with his role and saw his peers at MLSE being given opportunities. So when he heard that Peddie and MLSE were going to acquire an MLS expansion franchise, he put his hand up. He was quickly entrusted with figuring out whether an MLS team could work in Toronto.
"Everyone, without exception, thought I was crazy to buy into soccer in Toronto," said Beirne.
Seeking validation, he began to conduct research about the viability of an MLS franchise in Toronto in the message boards. At first he lurked, but eventually he came to a realization, combining what he saw online with data from presentations at MLSE meetings: past attempts to get a professional soccer franchise off the ground in Toronto had failed, but not for lack of ticket-buying support.
The fans were there, online, and the manner in which they dissected games and players showed an enthusiasm that was promising. Here was a community of forgotten fans, that had been marginalized by the other professional franchises in Toronto.
"It was clear there was a market people weren't recognizing for soccer," said Beirne.
So Beirne began trying to connect with those fans and to gauge their interest in an MLS club and, also, what they thought that club should look like. When Beirne had volunteered to lead the charge in understanding what fans of an MLS club in Toronto would want, he also had to be honest with himself: he himself was not a soccer fan, having gone to just one World Cup game in 1994. He was driving blind and needed soccer's fervent underground community to help take the wheel.
Beirne's goal was to keep the club as authentic as possible.
"We shouldn't try and propose a brand," he remembers thinking.
On October 29, 2005, Beirne registered in the Big Soccer online forum with the username mlsintoronto.
And on January 28, 2006, Beirne piped up as himself, creating a thread called "Market Research," and leading off with one of his first posts:
Full Disclosure: I'm employed by Maple Leaf Sports and I'm part of a team working on the MLS ramp up. Judging by the lurking I've been doing in this board lately it appears that soccer in Toronto has a huge potential, but a long way to go. I'm interested in your opinions — please dump them all here. Please resist the urge to slag us over basketball or hockey issues (but go ahead and shower us with accolades if you must). For what it's worth, for a name, I'm in favour of simple modest soccer. Nothing flashy: Toronto Football Club.
The feedback ranged from outright support to blatant suspicion.
"Must be the journalist in me," replied Duane Rollins, a part-time journalist under the username SweetOwnGoal. "My Bull$hit meter is waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy up. All the money MLSE has and it's doing 'market research' on a discussion board. Interesting."
"Back then, there were so many stops and starts, so I didn't want to be teased anymore," said Rollins. "We were always told this would happen or that would happen, but the rug would be pulled out."
Rollins' suspicion stemmed from Beirne's employer, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, and the giant corporate undertones it presented. "The culture back then was very niche, very fan-driven," Rollins said. "And this outsider comes in and says he's going to fix things for you, and you're like, 'Wait.'"
Soccer geeks, as Rollins put it, are not unlike Trekkies. "It was such a small little community," he said of Toronto's hard-core soccer supporters at the time.
But Beirne wanted to break down the barriers and prove himself to those fans. And he did so in a manner that soccer fans universally appreciate: he offered to buy them a beer.
A meeting was organized at the Duke of York pub in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood for Beirne to formally get acquainted with some of the Voyageurs and to hear their ideas for an MLS club. Two tables-worth of supporters showed up and surrounded Beirne. At one table were a group of enthusiastic supporters, eager to pick Beirne's brain about what an MLS club could look like, and to contribute what they believed would be important in a new professional soccer franchise.
"We were all very intrigued," said David Bailey, who sat at the table with a chatty and down-to-earth Beirne.
The supporters were impressed that MLSE was reaching out to the grassroots, and they were optimistic. Beirne allowed them to peek behind the curtain at what MLSE had been planning for the club. In a time when MLSE was known for their monolith, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the Leafs were able to influence millions of people, Beirne's engagement was encouraging to the soccer fans gathered.
"MLSE is reaching out," said Bailey, "to the little people."
What struck Bailey was Beirne's and MLSE's vision for forming a team: namely, to present an authentic product that true soccer fans would appreciate. "They didn't want this to be going after the soccer moms," said Bailey.
Meanwhile, at the other table sat Rollins and some of the other Voyageurs who were much quieter and much, much more skeptical. They welcomed Beirne with snide comments from under their breath.
But eventually, as Beirne's plan for an authentic club emerged, they changed their tone. "Paul is a natural salesman, but he came off as sincere in his desire to make this work. He understood that it was a bit of a closed society and that he needed to slowly work his way in by being patient and not force a relationship," said Rollins.
Rollins and others drew hope from the fact that, compared to other sports executives, Beirne was quite young and had an understanding of soccer and how many young people were quickly becoming interested in the sport.
And Beirne himself was learning. His notion of supporters moved beyond that of traditional youth soccer after that meeting and he took a "quantum leap forward" in terms of his understanding of what supporters' clubs could be. "It became a mutually supportive ecosystem," he said.
By the end of the meeting, surrounded by empty pint glasses, the Voyageurs walked away even more optimistic. "Paul is the most important figure in MLS history," said Rollins, "that no one knows."
There was a brief time, however, when Beirne could have lost that credibility. In the lead-up to announcing TFC to the public, MLSE had registered a number of possible names for the club as trademarks. The Northmen and Toronto Reds were among them. Some were real consider ations and some were decoys, as Beirne assumed that, given that the trademark registrations were in the public record, these names would eventually leak out.
And while Beirne had originally mentioned "Toronto FC" as a possible name, MLSE had another horse in the race that was gaining momentum: Inter Toronto.
The idea behind that name made sense: Toronto was a cosmopolitan city and Beirne needed the city's Italian, Portuguese, and Colombian communities, along with many others, to come together and support the club. MLSE were convinced that having Inter Toronto was the perfect way to encapsulate the international feel of the city. "The idea was that you can have a supporting interest here on Saturday afternoon and you're wearing red," said Beirne, "but you can be at the pub in the morning supporting your club and be wearing blue."
It was the connotations of that colour, blue, that still rubbed some the wrong way. Even the most casual of supporter was aware of Inter Milan, the Italian club that would go on to win the Serie A title five seasons in a row from 2005 to 2010, and were, at the time, one of the most well-known clubs in the world. Upon the leak, Beirne received an overwhelming wave of negative feedback.
"Oh, it's just like Real Salt Lake," Beirne remembers being told. "It's a fake name."
The club was risking alienating any possible fans who weren't Italian and didn't want to be associated with an Italian club (and even fans of other Italian clubs who might not want to be closely associated with the new team if it suggested support for Inter.)
And while TFC could have ridden the wave of Inter Milan's popularity during their first seasons, especially with their 2010 UEFA Champions League title, a vocal section of the incipient club's supporters, especially Beirne, talked themselves out of the name.
It was another early part of the learning process, and it reinforced the modus operandi that would dictate their approach: don't sell supporters and their understanding of the game short, and don't try to be something you're not.
"[The name] Toronto FC didn't offend anybody," said Beirne, relying on a classically, inoffensively Canadian approach. "It better executed what we wanted to achieve."
It might have appeared at times during Toronto FC's rather miserable early existence as if the club would never achieve any success on the pitch. It's almost easy to forget that, had it not been for a series of small steps, the club would not even exist as it's currently known today.
Toronto's former mayor, David Miller, who spent part of his childhood in England and acquired a love for soccer there, brought that passion back to Canada when he moved here in 1967.
He remembers, sometimes fondly, the many failed soccer franchises that came and went in Toronto between 1967 and when he was elected mayor in 2003.
Miller can't recall exactly where he was when he first heard the news of a new soccer stadium in Toronto, but he remembers being surprised. Shocked, even.
The then mayor of Toronto, and lifelong supporter of English second-division side Ipswich Town FC, heard the news through channels: the federal government was going to call a news conference on May 21, 2004, near the University of Toronto, to make a pivotal announcement: a partnership was being formed with the city's "community, athletic and sports leaders" to rebuild Varsity Stadium. The stadium had been demolished in 2002 after skyrocketing costs became higher than any revenue generated. Temporary seating was put up around the field after, simply to provide somewhere for fans to watch university football games.
And Toronto soccer fans, like Miller, took note, because this new stadium would be "a major component in the bid of the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) for Canada to host the 2007 FIFA Men's Under-20 [World Cup]."
The feds also promised that this new stadium would act as the permanent home and "focal point for Canadian soccer." For good measure, they even tacked on the idea that the 25,000-seat venue would serve as home to the Argonauts as well, because, well, why not?
At the time, federal Human Resources and Skills Development Minister Joe Volpe promised that the new stadium would "provide a critical boost" in the CSA bid to host the 2007 FIFA Men's U-20 World Cup. Volpe added that he believed the World Cup would bring "as much as $15 million in benefits coming directly to Toronto."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Come on You Reds"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Joshua Kloke.
Excerpted by permission of Dundurn Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
- Soccer in Toronto: The early years (1876-2003)
- Kick-off: The beginning of TFC (2004-05)
- Launching the franchise (2006-07)
- The debut season (2007)
- The ugly early years (2008-11)
- It's always darkest right before the light (2012-13)
- The Bloody Big Mess (2014)
- Another fresh start (2015)
- Dreams realized: The MLS Cup run (2016)
- The encore (2017)
- Marching on to Victory
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